Chapter Three
───── ? ────
Emma felt the air punch out of her lungs at the words, a real body.
Not a mannequin. Not a sick prank.
An image hit her fast and sharp. Ethan, pale and lifeless, sprawled in the dirt with dried blood at his temple. Her chest tightened, breath caught somewhere between disbelief and dread.
“Hayes,” Emma said, leaning in, “do you have an ID on the victim?”
“No,” he was quick to answer. “The guy’s face is covered. Mask. Looks just like Ethan Ross. But the mask… something’s off. There’s a little bulk to it underneath. Might be rigged.”
Ryker cursed. “You think it’s wired?”
“Could be,” Hayes said. “Could be nothing. But I’m not about to lift it and find out. I called the bomb squad just in case. But I figured you two would want to see this for yourselves.”
Emma’s stomach turned, a surge of emotion slamming into her all at once, grief she’d buried years ago, guilt that wasn’t hers, and a rising fury with nowhere to land. Her jaw clenched. Her spine stiffened.
She didn’t love Ethan. Not anymore. That part of her had died the night he walked out. But the thought of him being murdered… or worse, of him murdering someone else for this sick game, it twisted something deep inside her anyway.
“We’re on our way,” Ryker said, and ended the call.
Emma didn’t speak. She turned, grabbed her coat from the back of the chair, shoved her arms into the sleeves like she was suiting up for war.
Ryker was right behind her, already zipping his jacket. He looked at her once before they left the room, his expression unreadable.
Neither of them needed to say it.
They were going to find out if that mask hid the face of the man who had ruined everything, or if someone else had just died trying to pretend they were him.
Rustwood Road was just under three miles away, and once they were in the cruiser, Ryker drove out of the parking lot.
The sleet had started, a fine, cold mist that clicked against the windshield and froze on the edges of the wipers.
The sky was low and heavy, the kind of gray that pressed down like a weight.
There wasn’t much traffic on Main Street. Most people in this part of Texas knew better than to tempt fate when ice was in the forecast. This part of the state didn’t get much snow, and when it did, the roads turned slick fast and stayed that way. Folks stayed inside.
Well, apparently everyone except a killer.
Emma sat stiffly in the passenger seat, her hands knotted in her lap. Her thoughts raced faster than the cruiser, chasing possibilities she didn’t want to speak out loud yet. If the victim was wearing Ethan’s mask, what did that mean? A warning? A decoy? Or a message, one just for her?
Beside her, Ryker drove with his attention pinned to the already slick road. His jaw was tight, his gaze cutting through the sleet as if nothing would stop him.
Emma drew in a breath and let it out slowly, fogging the window with her exhale. She didn’t know what they were going to find out there.
But she knew it wouldn’t be good.
Ryker’s fingers tapped the steering wheel as they turned onto Rustwood Road, sleet hissing against the glass like static. The tires hummed over the wet asphalt, the cruiser cutting through the icy mist with quiet urgency. They were maybe five minutes out now, if that.
“We don’t have much time before we get to the scene,” he said, his voice cutting through the silence. “But how about that air clearing I mentioned?”
Emma turned her head slowly. “Now?”
He kept his eyes on the road. “No time like a sleeting drive toward a possible homicide scene to get things off your chest.”
She didn’t answer. Wasn’t sure she wanted to hear whatever he was about to say. But Ryker didn’t wait for her to agree.
“I knew Ethan was cheating,” he said.
The words landed hard, matter-of-fact, but edged with something raw.
“Back when you two were still together,” Ryker added. “I wanted to bust his balls for it, but I figured it wasn’t my place. He wasn’t just a buddy, he was your fiancé. And I figured if you didn’t know yet, you’d find out.”
Emma blinked, eyes burning.
Ryker’s admission didn’t surprise her. Not really. But hearing it confirmed by someone she trusted, someone who had known… that was a different kind of hurt. It clawed past the numbness and tapped into something she thought she’d buried.
She looked out the window, jaw tight. “It’s not the betrayal that gets me anymore. It’s the fact that I didn’t see it sooner. That I let myself fall for him. Let him put a ring on my finger and call it love.”
“Emma,” he muttered on a sigh.
“I feel stupid,” she snapped. “Gullible. I was a cop. I should’ve known better.”
Ryker didn’t argue. Didn’t tell her she wasn’t stupid. He just let the silence settle for a moment before speaking again.
“Total disclosure?” he went on.
She glanced at him, wary. Then, nodded, trying to steel herself up if this was more gut-twisting news.
“I was going to ask you out,” he confessed. “Before you got with Ethan. It wasn’t a bet, or a contest, or anything stupid like that. I was just a heartbeat too slow, and he asked you out first.”
Emma stared at him, the words catching her off guard. Not what she’d expected, not from Ryker, not today.
He glanced at her again. “Guess that heartbeat changed a lot of things.”
She didn’t say anything. Couldn’t, really. Because part of her wondered what might’ve been different if Ryker had been a little faster, and Ethan a lot more honest.
Ryker’s words hung in the air, heavier than the silence that followed. I was going to ask you out. Her skin prickled beneath her coat, a flicker of heat threading its way through her bloodstream like it didn’t give a damn that they were driving into a crime scene.
There was no denying it, he was attractive as hell.
Always had been. And not just the square-jawed, broad-shouldered, dark-eyed type of attractive, though he had that in spades.
It was more than that. The smirk that could cut and soothe in equal measure.
The gravel in his voice when he got serious.
The way he moved like he’d been trained to kill but chose restraint every time.
A mix of danger and discipline wrapped in great-fitting jeans and quiet loyalty.
She was sure plenty of women had felt the same tug. Hot, charming, and with just enough of that lethal edge to make the whole package impossible to ignore.
And she’d felt it too.
The moment she’d walked into the station a month ago and seen him at the end of the hall, leaning against her uncle’s old desk like he’d always belonged there.
That heat had flared all right. But she’d buried it fast.
Because she didn’t trust heat anymore. Or chemistry. Or whatever romantic fantasy her heart used to buy into before Ethan taught her what it really meant to misread someone.
She didn’t trust herself, not when it came to tugs or flashes or heartbeats.
Not when it came to men who said the right things and made her feel like something dangerous and wonderful all at once.
She turned back to the window, forcing her breathing to slow. This wasn’t the time. Wasn’t the place. And even if it was… she wasn’t ready.
The cruiser crested a low ridge and dipped into the clearing where the scene had been called in. It was desolate, just brittle ground and pump jacks rocking back and forth in slow, mechanical rhythm. The oil rigs groaned in the cold like they were working through pain.
Sleet dusted everything in a thin, gritty film. There were no houses, no barns, no structures of any kind. Just open land and the weight of something waiting.
Ryker pulled the cruiser off the shoulder behind another patrol unit. Hayes Brodie and Deputy Jesse McCain were inside, their silhouettes visible through the windshield.
Emma felt her jaw tighten as they stepped out into the wind. The sleet hit harder here, the flat landscape offering no protection. She pulled her collar up and followed Ryker toward the other vehicle.
Hayes and Jesse climbed out as they approached. “Bomb squad’s still about thirty minutes out,” Hayes said, his breath visible in the frigid air. “CSIs are holding position until they get the all-clear.”
Emma scanned the area. No sign of the body yet. Just the pump jacks, the sleet, the wind.
Then she saw it, about fifteen yards out, a dark tarp flapping against the hard-packed ground near the base of one of the pumps. It wasn’t secured, just weighed down by the shape beneath it.
Hayes pulled a set of binoculars from his coat pocket and handed them to Ryker. “Jesse and I backed off when we saw there were possible explosives. Here, you’ll want to take a look.”
Ryker took them and raised them slowly, his mouth set in a grim line.
Emma stood beside him, her hands clenched inside her coat pockets, heart racing faster even though she hadn’t moved.
The sight of that tarp, the way it fluttered like something was gasping for breath beneath it, it was sickeningly familiar.
Moving a few steps forward, Ryker adjusted the binoculars as he zeroed in on the tarp near the pump. Emma followed without a word, boots crunching over gritty frost, her eyes fixed on the rippling sheet of plastic that barely concealed what lay underneath.
He lowered the binoculars and held them out to her.
Emma took them, the cold metal biting her fingertips even through her gloves. She raised them slowly, bracing her elbows to steady the shake that she couldn’t quite suppress.
The figure under the tarp was unmistakably human. Definitely male. One arm had slipped free of the covering, stretched awkwardly toward the right leg, palm up and fingers curled slightly.
The face was obscured by the mask. But the build, the size, it was close enough to stir a low ache in her chest.
She couldn’t tell if it was Ethan. Not from this angle. So, she took a few steps to the side, shifting her view for a different perspective. Ryker followed silently, staying close.
“Zoom in on the hand,” he said, nodding toward it.